"Our customers trust us to
provide products that are what they say they are on the label,"
Walmart spokesperson Marilee McInnis said in an e-mail to
Bloomberg on Friday. "Welspun has not been able to assure us the
products are 100 percent Egyptian cotton, which is unacceptable.
While the sheets are excellent quality, we are offering our
customers a full refund."

Any customer seeking a refund can
bring their Welspun 100% Egyptian-cotton sheets,
tags off of the sheets, or receipts into a Walmart location to
receive a refund.

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Target's announcement has set of a series of investigations into Egyptian cotton bed sheets.

J.C. Penny and Bed Bath &
Beyond are
also investigating the credibility of their Welspun Egyptian
cotton products.

Walmart's news adds credence to
the theory that a large percentage of Egyptian cotton sold in
the US is fake.

Whilehigh-quality cotton can be grown around the
world, cottonmustbe grown in Egypt in order to be considered
real Egyptian cotton.

"When you think about it, 1% of
the world's crops are Egyptian cotton. You walk into any store,
or look at any one of these websites and see they're all selling
Egyptian cotton - it just doesn't add up," Scott Tannen, founder
of luxury bedding startup Boll and Branch,
told Business Insider in August. "I think [the Target case
is] just at the tip of the iceberg."

While Tannen has an interest in
exposing fake Egyptian cotton, he isn't the only one suspicious
of the industry.

Earlier this year, theCotton Egypt
Associationfound that
90% of "Egyptian cotton" sold by retailers tested using a
DNA-based authentication program did not contain any cotton
produced in Egypt. The association at the time held up Welspun as
a symbol of success - something that has clearly since been
called into question.